Job Security
by Julia456
Summary: Season 3 and slightly AU. What could be more difficult than saving Max Steel's life? Saving it with, um, 'company'.
1. One Of These Nights

It was her own fault, really. She was just too stubborn and prideful for her own good. Which wasn't to say stubbornness and pride hadn't saved her life a few times - 'cause they had - but she definitely lacked the ability to turn off the pride when she ought to.

Take, for example, when she'd been given the chance to not drive for six hours. _No way_, she'd said. _I can fly a jet, I can drive a van_. And then, _No, I don't need company. Go to sleep. I'll be fine - stop being such a dork_.

Yeah. _Really_ good planning. Drive straight through midnight, get a lousy three hours in before sunrise, be tired and underwhelming at the competition tomorrow. Way to show the boys how tough and awesome she was.

"Face it, Ryan, you're your own worst enemy," Kat muttered, turning off the van's engine. Van - ha! It was a bus. It was a _boat_. A fat, slow, aggravating cow of a vehicle and she hated driving it. At least when she'd piloted Behemoth, she'd had the entire sky to play around in; the van was trapped on a lane of interstate asphalt. Gravity sucked.

She sighed and flipped all the little switches that armed the security system, then gratefully quit the driver's seat in favor of her bunk. Her miserable, tiny bunk, with its miserable, paper-thin walls that did zilch to block sound of any kind. The mattress was divine, but that was all her sleeping space had to recommend it.

A sharp twinge shot up her back as she stood, and she winced. Cramped muscles - another lovely benefit to driving all night. In the morning, she would have to do warm-up stuff until her head exploded from boredom. Great.

She turned off the tiny overhead light in the tiny hallway, which _someone_ had left on, then, out of habit, pushed back the folding "door" of the first bunk, and checked.

Berto hadn't left anything else on. His laptop was cold, black, and silent, and there were no stray bits and pieces of projects blinking their merry circuits at her. He'd even managed to get himself into bed this time, instead of passing out in his desk chair. He had, however, fallen asleep with his glasses on. Again.

She reached up and carefully disentangled the black-framed specs with a young lifetime of stealth and delicate maneuvering. His eyelids didn't even flutter. She felt pride, but the victory was less a comment on her skills than on Berto's propensity towards heavy sleep.

_Wish I could sleep like that,_ she thought, envious and sad and happy for him at the same time. She couldn't sleep like the dead because she didn't want to _be_ dead, and at one point that would've been the consequence. Berto's pre-N-Tek life had been charmed and innocent. He could sleep.

The glasses got a new home on top of the computer, where he'd be able to find them tomorrow with little fuss.

One down, one to go. She shut the folding door again and moved down to the next. Typical - Josh hadn't bothered to close his door in the first place. They had five square inches of privacy in this stupid van and he left his door open so he could be a hero, or something ridiculous like that. _Like he can't hear through the door anyway._

She peered into the darkness and failed to see an eerie green glow snaking from his desk to his arm, so she turned the hallway light on again and, in the dim glow, fished around for the portable transphasic generator's magic plastic tubing.

And made too much noise for his enhanced hearing. He stirred and mumbled, "Kat?"

She found the generator and followed the tubing to its end - a terminal that would snap into the port on his wrist biolink. "Shh. You're unplugged."

Josh frowned, blinked, and made a vague dismissive noise. "I'm good."

Sometimes Kat could almost see why her predecessor had risked censure and dismissal to fool around with the boss' kid. When he was nearly unconscious, his many annoying qualities were masked by the fact he was, actually, pretty darn cute.

Not that she had any plans to be the next Rachel Leeds. He wasn't _that_ cute. "You sure?"

"Yeah. Full up." Another frown. "Mostly."

She let the plastic tube slip. " 'Night, then."

More mumbling, which she took to mean "good night." Mission accomplished, she exited the bunk and dusted her hands off. Everyone tucked in and sleeping, except for her. Sometimes she wondered when she'd turned into a mother hen. It sure as heck wasn't in her job description. Or her nature, for that matter.

She switched the idiot light off _again_, stepped into her own bunk space, and debated, briefly, the merits of changing into clothes more suitable for sleeping than a pair of blue jeans. No - it'd only be for a few hours anyway. Not like she hadn't slept in street clothes before.

She kicked off her sneakers and settled down to the last task of her waking hours.

A note. Just a short one. Sent out on the sly, ducking Berto's computer surveillance, so that no one would know except her and the person receiving it.

_Arrived safe & sound_, she typed. _Boys asleep_.

She hesitated, then added, _He needs the real generator_, before sending it off. On the other end was Jefferson Smith, watching and waiting for the daily report of his son's bodyguard.

Not partner. Not teammate. Not friend.

She _was_ all those things, of course, and maybe she would've elected to stay with the boys anyway, but that wasn't her job. Her job was reporting behind Josh's back, behind Berto's back. Hanging out, just one of the crew, until she saw trouble.

_With N-Tek being shut down, Agent Ryan, I need you to keep an eye on Josh..._

_No problem, boss. I can fly a jet, I can save your son. Extreme sports? Heck yes. Since I was a kid, why?_

It was the most thankless job in the world, chaperoning Max Steel. And how was she supposed to do _that_, when he was the one who usually saved _her _- much as she hated it - and besides, anything that could get Max in trouble would be way more than a mere mortal like Kat Ryan could handle.

But an assignment was an assignment. She was too proud and stubborn to give it up, even on nights like this when she so wanted to. You didn't tell the boss you couldn't handle things, especially when the thing you were handling was the boss' kid.

A light flashed on the computer and she went to see the response. All business, as usual. Not a word about the generator. She shouldn't have said anything; Jefferson couldn't fix it until the FBI let him, and until then Josh was just going to have to manage, nevermind that he was slowly running out of juice. A death sentence, but one that everybody was ignoring.

He was annoying, way too into the total Boy Scout hero thing, and pathetically unable to admit that she was better than him at - well, at everything. But... he was a good guy. A _nice_ guy. Her friend. And he hadn't asked for it any more than she had asked for the assignment.

Which reminded her - she hadn't shut the stupid door on Josh's bunk.

Kat padded back out into the hallway and the half-step to the door. Without shoes, she moved more quietly, and that was probably why he didn't hear her this time. Or maybe it was just that he'd finally dropped off into real sleep, now that he had no one to listen for.

Whatever. Josh was asleep, with the biolink collapsed into a watch. She was glad. It meant she didn't have to see the digital readout of his transphasic energy levels.

She took a last look at him, making sure he was breathing, making sure that she still had a job and still had a friend, then slid the door shut and took herself to bed.


	2. Maxed Out

There was a lot of sunshine. A _lot_. Too much, in Kat's opinion. And accompanying the sunshine was an equal amount of heat and way, way more humidity than anyone ever needed.

She squinted against the headache that had been gnawing at her all day and wished for rain. Or at least a solar eclipse. "Whose brilliant idea was it to hold an event in _Florida_ in _June_?"

Berto actually checked the managerial clipboard in his hands. "That would be... the city of Orlando."

Kat's squint turned into a scowl. "And whose idea was it for us to come?"

"Uh... Jefferson's."

"Right." She gave up being irritated and refocused her attention on the athletes, busting their guts out on the battleground of extreme sports competition. Of course Josh was one of them, and of course he was working twice as hard as anyone else, because the guy who couldn't be bothered to take the trash out of the stupid van was the same guy who was deadly serious about victory.

_Dangle a first-place trophy in front of him and he turns into an unstoppable juggernaut_, she thought, disgusted. And it was all the worse because _her_ performance had been decidedly lackluster. It had, in fact, sucked. She'd been exhausted and in a really bad mood and she'd blown all of the events she was entered into. Now Team Steel was climbing up from dead last, but only because of Josh.

Josh - who was really pushing it out there on the motocross course. Who had lapped the guy in last place, but still had a long way to go to catch up to the lead. Who looked - tired? The unstoppable juggernaut, on his full night of sleep, tired? Unease tickled at the back of her neck.

"Think we'll have time to visit DisneyWorld?" Berto asked, a bit wistful. Josh failed to accelerate coming out of a curve and lost a few more yards to the lead.

_That's not right_.

"What?" she said, distracted, then mentally strung his words into a coherent question and replied, "Why, you want to ride the teacups?"

Josh took another curve badly, this time at their end of the track and close enough so that they could see his face through the curving shield of the helmet. Tired. Fighting.

"Not really. Actually, I guess I'd rather see one of the other theme parks -" He broke off, frowning. "Does Josh look okay to you?"

She scrubbed a hand across her forehead, trying to get rid of the sweat, or maybe the headache, or maybe the sense of impending doom. "He looks tired."

Berto fumbled for the PDA permanently attached to his hip and called up the remote link to his Josh-monitoring systems, which were still in the van. "He shouldn't be tired. He was operating at 85 this morning, and that was in Max mode."

And while he was just Josh, he used almost no transphasic energy at all. Unless... "You think he's cheating it?" she asked, worrying about how badly hyper-fair Josh would have to want a victory in order to cheat. She played it straight, but Josh was - well, a Boy Scout.

"Not consciously," Berto said, and then found the readout he wanted - or didn't want. Kat peered over his shoulder and couldn't make much sense of the data, but he sucked in a breath, and she knew it was bad.

The competitors had looped around and were coming back their way, but the race wasn't over. Except for Josh. She had kinda figured that part out already. "Time to get our boy off the field."

He nodded. "_Now_."

And then -

Josh took the curve and overbalanced, leaned too far - crashed. He hit the track hard and slid free of the bike, which flipped and crunched itself against the inner railing. Other bikes and riders ripped by, engines whining, missing him somehow.

Kat was already gone, sprinting for the sideline, vaulting over the railing onto the tire-chewed dirt of the motocross track. She hadn't thought about what would happen, about how she might've been flattened by a bike; very bad planning on her part, who had built a career on being carefully overprepared.

It didn't matter. The officials blew whistles and waved their arms and shut down the track long before anyone could get all the way back to Team Steel.

She dropped down next to Josh and, ignoring his attempts to do it himself, pulled his helmet off in a none-too-gentle gesture. He squinted up at her - glared - and he was tired and a little hazy but his brown eyes were, otherwise, as sharp as ever.

_Not dead yet_. Relief hit her gut, followed by a new fear.

"Get up," she hissed, tugging at his arm. "Smile and and wave and walk off the track like you're a million bucks. Or we'll have EMTs by the dozen taking a good, hard look at what makes you tick."

Josh glanced at the edge of the track and scrambled to his feet. He staggered a little, but she shoved the helmet into his hands, hard, and that seemed to steady him. Always a good sport, he flashed a broad smile at the crowd and the officials, gave a thumbs-up, and started walking. "Get my bike," he told her.

_Screw the bike_, she thought. The bike was just a bike. A couple thou out of their salaries, but nowhere as important as keeping Max Steel a secret. What she said was, "You first. Back to the van."

Berto was already doing his job: warding off the medicial establishment with his awe-inspiring credentials. Did the Dr. in "Dr. Roberto Martinez" stand for M.D.? Not a chance. Did anyone need to know that? _No_, emphatically.

The people who hadn't yielded to a Ph.D. gave way before her loud, repeated explanation that _He's just going to take a breather!_ and Josh's manifestly cheerful good health. The latter was a facade, of course, and not a good one; she could see the lines of tension growing tighter, ready to snap, and the way he was ghost-white beneath the California tan.

The trio made it all the way across the parking lot, all the way to the foot of the van's steps, before Josh stumbled. Kat held him up and Berto held open the door, and somehow Josh reached the couch without collapsing onto the floor. He collapsed on the couch instead.

Berto fetched the generator; Kat grabbed Josh's wrist to open the biolink terminal. She caught a glimpse of his energy level in the process.

"_Two percent_?" she said, incredulous and sick all at once. "You're at _two_?"

"Feels like one," Josh said faintly. And then those brown eyes faded shut.


	3. Body Guards

"He'll live," Berto said. His head was buried in his hands when he said it, so it was muffled and distorted, but Kat had been waiting hours for precisely those two words. She heard him fine. She also heard the unspoken _For now_.

"What," she asked for the first time since they'd snatched Josh from the jaws of death, "is wrong? And don't tell me it's the sucky generator, 'cause it's not."

"It's not," Berto agreed, heavy with exhaustion. He straightened - a little - in the passenger seat and put his glasses back on. "Well, not totally. How much do you know about the Max probes?"

"Just what I was briefed on when I got this assignment." Not a whole heck of a lot, in other words. But Kat had a) not been interested in the jargon and b) not happy to have partners, so her curiosity had been at a low point.

Berto sighed and settled into the deadly serious, earnest expression that always presaged a lecture. "Okay. At first, the nanoprobes were developed for machines only. Two models came out of that program: one that could go stealth, and one that could change surface appearance."

She thought of the Hawks and Shadows in N-Tek's secret vehicle fleet, and tried to pretend that she didn't desperately miss them. "So... invisible jets and color-change cars?"

"Believe it or not, the invisible jets were easier." A quick flash of humor, then more seriousness. "Eventually, N-Tek decided to design nanoprobes that could interface with biological systems. After a few years they had a model that worked pretty much all the time. Then they tried to see how much information they could pack into each probe."

She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. Sitting here, staring into the darkened parking lot through the fat-cow van's windshield, was not what she needed. She needed to be _doing_. Things always sorted themselves out better when she was in motion. "A lot?"

"Too much. It turned out that energy demands went up exponentially with every mode they added, and they added everything they could think of. That's why they called the whole bio-model line 'Maximum'." He ticked each mode off on his fingers as he named them: "Dormant, stealth, active - that's like the color-change - and a new one for biologics they called 'turbo'. They also seriously upgraded the functional capability of the active mode."

Her headache was trying to upgrade to migraine, and untangling Berto's techie-speak was not helping. "English."

"They made it so the host could do more stuff."

At the other end of the van, sprawled across the couch and out cold, a host to nanoprobes had come down just on this side of life. "The host. That's nice and clinical," she said, sharper than she intended. But that host was her friend, and she was angry at the whole world.

Berto, bless his genius heart, understood and took no offense. "They couldn't get enough energy to the probes," he said, picking up as if she hadn't spoken at all. "No matter what it was, the probes burned through it in a matter of hours, sometimes less, and especially when all the modes were accessed. And when the energy got down too low, the probes became - _unpredictable_."

She decided she didn't like that word when it was said in that tone.

"Further development of the 'Maximum' probes was put on hold while research was conducted to see if the energy problem was insurmountable. That's why they brought me onboard. I was working on a form of exotic energy in another area of the R&D labs, but I had nanotech expertise."

And he was the smartest guy on the face of the planet, at least in her opinion, but obviously that didn't count for much on some issues. "You couldn't figure out a solution either, huh."

"Transphasic energy works better than anything else, but it's not a permanent solution. I knew that when I recommended it to Jefferson..." He looked down the corridor at Josh, then turned back to Kat with hushed urgency. "He's gotta have the generator, Kat. The nanoprobes are destabilizing faster than anyone could have expected. If he doesn't get a full charge - _soon_ - he's going to die."

And that did it. She was his bodyguard, after all; his body's continued good health was ultimately her responsibility. So she was going to _take_ responsibility. Enough of this "sitting around" garbage - she was going to plan, she was going to prep, she was going to _act_. Her daily message to Jeff would be, _A little trouble, nothing big. Going to stay low for a couple of days._ Lies and lies. She wouldn't be in Orlando tomorrow - or Florida, for that matter.

"Time to get proactive," she said out loud, smacking the steering wheel. "Berto, I hate to ask you, but hack Jefferson's files. I want a name. I want someone we can cut a deal with."

Thirty minutes later, she had her plans together. She had a name. She had an address. She had a midnight red-eye flight. And she had a solemn promise that Joshua McGrath would be alive when she got back.

"You'd better be," she muttered at his sleeping form, sprawled out on the couch with little grace. He was gonna wake up with a nasty crick in his neck in the morning - if he even woke up.

Some ghost of maternal feeling stirred, and she ran her fingers across his too-chill forehead, light and quick. Her best friend. A half of her family.

She was _so_ going to save his annoying Boy Scout hero life.


	4. Back In Black

A pink tank top was not going to cut it for this meeting. Kat hated the stupid things anyway - she was not, had never been, never would be, a _pink_ kind of girl - but the Stone Age cave-morons in N-Tek's PR department were all of the opinion that she ought to look more _feminine_.

Ergo, it was either pink shirts or longer hair or makeup, and the hair was non-negotiable, to say nothing of the makeup. She'd suffered for most of the season on the circuit, but, happily, clandestine meetings with spymasters were not on the list of things that she had to wear pink for.

Which was good. 'Cause she wasn't going to anyway. No one took you seriously in pink.

The black tank she'd buried at the bottom of her wardrobe, on the other hand, looked both professional and kinda cool. It also had the green-and-blue N-Tek thumbs-up logo on the chest, which was _very_ dorky, but maybe that would work out okay; it would remind Mr. Spymaster that she came with credentials.

"Serious, world-saving credentials," she said to herself, then glanced up at the looming figure of President Lincoln to see if he'd heard. He hadn't, natch, but his monument echoed with the voices of early-bird tourists. _Gotta have tourists_, she thought. Gotta have potential witnesses was more like it.

She looked the other way, over the flat Reflecting Pool towards the needle of the Washington Monument. Last time she'd been here, she and Max had done some B&E, some hostage-saving, and of course she'd done that sweet piece of flying right up against said monument. Max had later sworn that he hadn't been free-falling to his death, but she knew better: one of the few times she'd unquestionably saved his life. Like right now.

The day had hardly edged past sunrise in D.C. and - big surprise - it was promising to be just as muggy as it had been in Orlando. She shifted on the stone steps that lead to the memorial interior and checked her watch. 7:15 AM. Yup - here came her spymaster contact, right on cue.

She knew he was her contact because he looked so absolutely ordinary, so commonplace, so _invisible_ among the dark suit politicians and casual tourists of the city, that he _had_ to be a spy. Only N-Tek (and DREAD, if she was going to be completely honest) liked its operatives to come with distinctive personalities.

Kat stood as he climbed the marble steps to reach her, dusted off her hands, and prepared to do battle.

"Kat Ryan?" he asked her, a bit out of breath. Navy blue suit, maroon tie, dark hair - receding a little. Could stand to exercise a few pounds off his gut and chin. The pale complexion of a cubicle rat. Oh yeah. Definitely a government-issue secret agent.

"N-Tek needs the transphasic generator back," she said instead of _Hello_ or _Yes, that's me_. Hardball, right from the start. Let him know she meant business and nothing but.

He partly obliged her by skipping over the "can neither confirm nor deny" garbage. "That could be difficult to arrange, since my agency had nothing to do with its shutdown."

The CIA wasn't supposed to carry out operations on U.S. soil against U.S. citizens. But _wasn't supposed to_ and _reality _were different things, and Kat knew it. She narrowed her eyes. "Or we could do this the hard way," she said, mocking.

Mr. Spy appeared not to notice her words. Instead he glanced around casually to see if anyone was in earshot, then said, "The problem, Agent Ryan, is that the generator was used by a terrorist to nearly destroy a major city."

"He tried. Didn't." She was trying to be flippant, brusque, mostly to reinforce her professionalism but also to hide the persistent current of unease at what she was doing.

She'd gotten Berto to hack into their boss' personal files, snuck out of the state under that same boss' nose, and was now engaging in a thoroughly back-alley under-the-table negotiation with a certified government spook. 

Sneaky, underhanded, dishonorable. Neither Josh nor Max would have done any of those things.

Of course, Josh/Max was lying at death's door with all that honor. _This isn't breaking the law, it's just being a spy; besides, the ends here definitely justify the means_, she told herself. _Stop being a dork. Stop worrying_.

The spook shrugged, faint disappointment creasing his bland face. "_Almost_ only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. And this as well, unfortunately. Your employer is an old friend, and I'd like to accommodate your request, but I'm afraid the security risk is simply too high."

"There's no proof he's alive," she pointed out quickly, careful to not say the name aloud. It was the truth: no one had seen or heard from John Dread since N-Tek's generator had gone kablooey.

"Or dead," the spook added. Which was also true: John Dread had left no body, only sunglasses.

She was nonetheless cheered to hear him say it. _Aha! Now we're getting somewhere_. With precision, she asked, "So what if you had proof?"

"Well..." He pretended to consider it, like he'd never thought of the idea before. "With the man in custody, the threat would be lessened considerably. And if he should happen to be deceased, I don't think we could make a case against restoring the generator."

"I'll do it. I'll bring him in, dead or alive." She grinned at the spook, pleased to visibly discomfort him with her enthusiasm. "Always wanted to say that."

He straightened his government-issue maroon tie and glanced around for potential ambushes before he committed. "Because I know Jefferson didn't sanction this -" 

She cut him off: "He would if he knew what I was asking for."

The spy would know before lunch, of that she was sure, especially with the big fat bait she'd just dropped. Bland indifference or not, he was curious. And that curiosity was going to get her what she wanted. "You'll have seventy-two hours and an agency team," he finished.

"Gimme forty-eight hours and an old enemy instead."

His eyebrow went up. "I'm sorry?"

Kat's grin widened. This was a really good plan. Or a really bad one. She didn't know yet, but by God, she was going to carry it out all the way. "I need to borrow Dread's most loyal operative."

"We don't have access to Psycho or Vitriol," the spook said.

"Not the _dumbest_," Kat corrected. "The _most loyal_. His pet dragon."


	5. False Colors

It was difficult to escape custody when you were taken _into_ custody while in low Earth orbit. Dragonelle had learned that the hard way. No quick-change masks and _Mission: Impossible_ disguises on space cruisers - or on the landing strip, for that matter. Not that it mattered when you had N-Tek-issue cuffs on your wrists and ankles and three secret agents watching you like the proverbial hawks.

So Kat wasn't surprised that Dragonelle had been hauled off to prison, nor that they'd managed to keep her there. She _was _surprised that Dragonelle was being flown into one of D.C.'s airports. On a clandestine, very hush-hush private flight, of course, but letting a known terrorist of Dragonelle's stature anywhere near the nation's capital seemed kind of stupid.

_Oh well. Helps_ me _out_, Kat thought, watching the small jet taxi down the runway. Standing beside her, Mr. Boring Suit Spy was looking quite bland and middle-aged, and a little bored himself. She kept the smirk off her face with considerable effort and ignored the small, guilty knot in her stomach with the same.

_Wait a few minutes_, she wanted to tell him; _I'll give you all the excitement you can stand._

The jet slowed to a stop and the stairs were lowered. Kat and the spook hustled across the tarmac; she was on board before the engines whined down. Inside, it looked like any other private, corporate jet: lots of beige, lots of leg room. The only flaw in the image was the heavily restrained woman in a bright orange prison jumpsuit and the five heavily armed marshals guarding her.

"Wait," Kat said. "Something about this looks familiar. Oh, yeah - you in handcuffs. How's prison? Get any tattoos?"

"Well, well. _Agent_ Ryan," Dragonelle said, darkly and dryly amused. "My money was on Steel. I didn't know you had so much... influence."

"You learn something new every day." Kat elbowed past one of the guards to stand directly in front of the terrorist. She and the dragon weren't archfoes, except as their loyalties made them; that aforementioned little space fiasco had been their one encounter. Didn't mean they didn't hate each other. "Here's something else: I need your help."

"Now, that _is_ new." She tilted her head, black eyes narrowing beneath the lame but permanently attached gold plate on her forehead. Downside to those cybernetic implants - no upgrades for fashion. "Whatever could it be?"

Kat, despite not caring one whit about the state of her fingernails, began to minutely examine them all the same. "I need to find John Dread in a hurry. I've got ten bucks says you know where he is."

Dragonelle's eyes narrowed further to dangerously glinting slits, but the amused tone remained. "_If _I knew, you'd be among the last to find out, Ryan."

"Uh-huh." She glanced at the spook, standing like portly statuary behind the security team, then back at Dragonelle. "What if I told you that I need you to _show_ me where he is?"

The other woman's face went carefully blank. After a momentary pause, she said, "That might be different."

_She shoots, she scores_. As predicted. Freedom was an awfully big carrot to dangle in any prisoner's face, and Dragonelle had been desperate to get to Dread _before_ his disappearance and/or demise.

Kat was getting a heck of a lot of practice at disguising her smug triumphs. This one she masked with a casual nod at the marshals and a yet-more casual, "How about we finish this conversation on a different plane? Flight to... Paris, maybe?"

"Paris is very nice this time of year," Dragonelle said mildly. She made no move to resist the marshals as they undid enough of her restraints to let her stand and walk (more like shuffle) towards the open air. She didn't make any move to escape, either, as the whole parade trooped down the stairs. Instead, ever the chameleon, she looked suddenly small and meek and delicate beneath the orange suit and metal chains.

Yeah, the dragon was all innocent vanilla - a docile, gentle lamb. When she wanted to be.

Kat wasn't fooled. Neither was anybody else. They were all expecting Dragonelle to bolt as soon as her feet hit the tarmac.

They weren't expecting the plane to detonate in a fiery whoosh behind them. They weren't expecting smoke bombs to go off all around. They weren't expecting someone to slice through Dragonelle's restraints with a pen laser, grab her, and sprint towards the grassy swath on the other side of the runway.

And they _for sure_ weren't expecting that someone to be Kat Ryan.

"Is this your idea of a joke?" Dragonelle asked as they ran.

"Only a cosmic one." Kat resisted the urge to glance over her shoulder at the fireball, the choking, blinding clouds of dense white smoke, the alarms and sirens and chaos. In a few seconds the marshals would stagger clear, figure out where they'd gone, and start shooting; she wanted to see how soon bullets would be zinging towards her, but at the same time, she really didn't. Instead she pulled her silver N-Tek headset out of her pocket and slipped it on. "Berto! Fire it up!"

"I can't believe I'm helping you do this," Berto's voice muttered in her ear.

The Hawk suddenly melted into view, engines winding up and canopy sliding back. Kat closed the last few meters and jumped into the pilot's seat without looking to see if Dragonelle would follow.

Dragonelle, having half a brain, jumped into the back seat.

Kat flipped the switches and pushed the buttons that reactivated the manual controls. "Well, you're all done now, Martinez. How's things?" she added, not wanting to say, _Is Josh dead yet from nanoprobe failure or what?_ in front of a woman who would've done a jig to hear it.

"The same," he said tersely. "Move fast. And _vaya con Dios_."

Kat twisted around to look at Dragonelle occupying the rear of the jet and snorted. "Not on this flight."

Berto disconnected; she tugged the headset off again and closed the canopy. The stealth mode reactivated as soon as it snicked shut and she stopped worrying about getting shot. "Please fasten your seatbelts and grab the airsick bag. Our express flight to Paris is taking off."

The VTOL kicked in nice and smooth, like the Hawk hadn't been collecting dust in UN Secretary General Mari Kaita's embassy's garage since the FBI shutdown, like it hadn't given her fits flying it down from NYC that morning after her red-eye flight up to the Big Apple - making her almost late to her 7:15 AM meeting with Jeff's old CIA friend.

Who, she could see as they ascended, was standing on the tarmac with the angry and embarrassed marshals (not to mention every firefighter, cop, and paramedic in Virginia _and_ Maryland), no doubt trying to figure out how she'd slipped all that plastic explosive past security.

_I rock_, she thought, not unhappily. And her guilty conscience tacked on, _Yeah, OK - but _now _you're breaking the law_.

"Come over to the Dark Side after all, Ryan?" Dragonelle said behind her, voice rippling with amusement, curiosity, and just a hint of homicidal desperation.

Kat rolled her eyes. "Right. Because I want a metal plate in my head, too."

Dragonelle hmphed.

"The plane's set to explode if anyone except me tries to pilot it," Kat said, getting the preliminaries out of the way. "DNA scan - you know. There's a change of clothes under the seat if you want to lose the Little Miss Federal Penitentiary look."

There was rustling as Dragonelle moved around, and then a sharp noise of displeasure. "_Pink_? I'd rather wear orange."

The dragon had taste; Kat had to give her that. Still - "Orange makes you look fat."

"Hmph."


	6. Cats and Dragons

Flying was awesome. Flying over the Atlantic Ocean was boring.

Visually, anyway. Kat had forgotten that part, since she hadn't gotten to do it since forever. Still - although the scenery outside remained half blue-and-white and, wow! half blue-and-green - she could go up, down, forwards, backwards, and she could be upside-down or sideways while she did it. Boring or not, it was a vast improvement over slogging down the highway in a stupid bus.

"You've got me at a disadvantage," Dragonelle said behind her, quite conversationally.

A vast improvement - except for the company.

"More than usual?" Kat tossed back. She was mostly concerned with the radar screen. Theoretically a Hawk was undetectable by anything other than N-Tek know-how, but she wasn't going to count on that as a certainty, especially not after the FBI had gone through the spy division with a fine-tooth comb.

Of course, they hadn't gotten the blueprints or data on any of N-Tek's vehicles; that info had walked out of the building casually tucked into the shabby coveralls that Chuck Marshak habitually wore - and none of the Feebs had bothered to search a lowly janitor. The old man's audacity (not to mention success) had been one of the few high points in an otherwise sucky day. It still made her laugh.

At any rate, as a consequence of her paranoia, she couldn't give her backseater the attention the dragon required. Kat prayed that Dragonelle believed the line about DNA scans and behaved herself.

_Yeah right._

"I just can't figure out _why,_" Dragonelle continued, sounding more sly than curious. "Why now, for example? Why the dramatic escape? What," she dug in with deepening malevolence, "is so important that little Kat Ryan would risk her gold star to set a terrorist free?"

The dragon would turn an inch into a mile. Kat wasn't even going to begging to allude to Josh's "condition." Keeping her own tone dismissive, she tossed back, "It has nothing to do with you, that's for sure."

"The escape was brilliant, I'll admit that - even if it _was_ just for show. _I_ wasn't expecting it," Dragonelle added, "since you've never been that good."

_Good enough to pluck your sorry self out of orbit,_ Kat thought, but bit her tongue because the last thing she needed right now was to overly antagonize Dragonelle. She did file away the dragon's suspicion that she had faked the escape. _That_ could be useful later.

Maybe it was the proximity to the water, but Dragonelle obviously felt inclined to do some blatant fishing. "I don't know how you got a shark like Bob following orders when you're hardly one yourself."

"Who?" Kat had no idea who Bob was. Her oh-so-middle-aged spook, a Bob? It was possible; Jeff's computer had listed the agency and contact number only.

Dragonelle mistook her confusion for obfuscation and snapped, "Don't deny it - I saw him tagging along behind you on the plane. Called in a favor with Jefferson, I guess."

Kat snorted. Oh yeah. That was _exactly_ what she'd done. _If anything goes wrong, I'm going to be job-hunting within a day. Scratch that - I'm going to be on the corner with my new WILL WORK FOR FOOD sign._ The distressing part was that, as the plan unfolded, the more chances there were for things to go wrong.

Dragonelle threw out another fishing line: "Must be a big deal if the CIA is playing nice."

"The CIA never plays nice," Kat said, which was indisputably true, and then, on the theory that two could play at this game, changed the subject. "So where's Dread?"

"Dread? Good question."

"Unless you want to swim -" Kat threatened. She rolled the jet starboard until they were inverted and her backseater had a lovely, unobstructed view of the deep blue sea.

"I never swim," Dragonelle said, in that dark, dry amused tone she seemed to love so much. "I'd rust."

Cue visions of a rusted-out dragon bobbing helplessly in the waves. There were sharks of a literal nature in the visions, too, and they had big sharp teeth and a taste for cyborg flunkies.

Under her breath, Kat muttered, "Don't tempt me."

"Honestly - I don't know where Mr. Dread is," Dragonelle said, amusement evaporating. In fact, she sounded so very irritated to admit it that Kat decided it was also true. "I've been behind bars, remember? I _do_ know that he escaped and nearly destroyed N-Tek." She gave a nasty little chuckle. Clearly the _honey vs. vinegar_ strategy wasn't covered in Villains 101.

"Less editing, more directions," Kat said. She checked her radar, didn't see any US or NATO blips popping up, and took the Hawk higher. She'd set a course to Paris - at random; a lot of stuff happened in Paris and it seemed like a safe bet - and hoped that'd be Dragonelle's choice as well. In a little while they'd have to waste a serious amount of fuel if it were anywhere else. She was _not_ going to fly around on bingo fuel with a dragon.

Dragonelle made a humming noise. "Answer one question first."

"Maybe," Kat said, wary. And paranoid.

"Why _are_ you doing this? What's waiting for you at the other end?"

"That's more than one question, sorry," Kat said with no trace of apology. Then she reluctantly answered them both: "I'm trying to save lives."

Josh and Max. Two lives.

If you fudged the count a little.

She held her breath and silently told the dragon that she _better_ be satisfied, 'cause she wasn't getting any more info and the next question _would_ be an invitation to swim.

But all Dragonelle did was sniff disdainfully. "We'll start looking in Berlin."

Kat punched in the new coordinates and the rest of the flight was spent in blissful, if tense, silence.

They landed on the roof of N-Tek's Berlin headquarters, built after Dread's local lair had been blown to really itty-bitty pieces. It was a technically flawless and aesthetically soulless building - all glass, metal, and concrete - but it did have a touch of SoCal flair in the giant neon aqua-colored N-TEK sign that sprawled across its streetside face.

She'd checked up on all the worldwide offices before leaving Orlando and had the specs of this place pretty well memorized. The roof was secretly reinforced for Hawk landings, the secret elevator to the secret underground levels was still operational, and her secret security code still worked.

All the secret stuff was definitely one of the coolest parts of being a spy.

Kat powered down the engines, but not all the way, and told the on-board computer to broadcast a signal on Berto's frequency. He hadn't wanted to get too involved her plan; he _did_ want to keep an eye on her. This way he'd know where she was if there was an emergency.

"Okay, get out," Kat announced, sliding back the canopy. She followed her own orders and hopped down, glad to be back on solid ground after all the time in the cockpit. Dragonelle disembarked too, and Kat got her first look at the terrorist wearing one of her very own stupidly pink shirts. It was too funny - even if the dragon was straining the fabric in ways _she_ never could - and that possibly accounted for the fact that she was caught off-guard.

Whatever the reason, before she blinked, before she expected it, Dragonelle had her pinned against the curving metal of the jet, one strong hand around her throat.

"Now, _Agent_ Ryan," she hissed, tightening her fingers with a malicious smile, "we're going to do things _my_ way."


	7. Achtung, Baby

Note: Dr. Wolff is entirely my invention. Thanks go to my bro's GF for the German and Blackrose for the name. Kinda. :)

* * *

"I really don't think so," Kat said. Croaked, actually, since the vise grip on her larynx and trachea made it difficult to talk normally. Her voice would be even scratchier than usual for days after this. Assuming she lived.

She planned on living. Death had never been high up on her To Do list.

That, and she had a few tricks up her sleeves - or to be more accurate, the waistband of her jeans.

"You're hardly in a position to negotiate," Dragonelle said, smirking. She clamped down a little harder on Kat's throat, enough to make spots dance at the corners of her vision. "_I_ have the advantage now. The upper hand, as it were."

Kat had been pinned against the Hawk; Dragonelle was taller and stronger, and was effectively using that extra mass to restrain those parts of Kat's body that weren't throat. It was a poorly-conceived plan, and wasn't being executed that well either.

She _should_ have been immobilized, or KO'd, but instead Dragonelle wanted to gloat - _yawn_ - and make her suffer, blah blah, and so she had more than enough freedom of movement to reach around to the small of her back, pull out the N-Tek-issue energy handcuffs tucked away there, and slap one end on Dragonelle's wrist. The other she attached to herself. "Things change. Oh, and just FYI, the bad pun? - was really bad."

"Flattery," Dragonelle said. She withdrew her hand from Kat's neck and held up the cuff on her wrist, turning it in the light to examine it. She still didn't look as defeated as she ought to. "The bracelet is nice, _Agent_, but I'm afraid I'll have to return it."

"Go ahead and try to pick the lock. It took Berto a few hours, and _he_ designed them."

Dragonelle made a dismissive noise regarding Berto and used her un-cuffed hand to poke at the slender loop of energy around her wrist. The reward was a bright spark that caught the dragon by surprise and made her suck in an angry breath. She glared at Kat, who hadn't touched _her _side of the cuffs and was therefore unharmed.

Casually, belatedly, taking way too much delight in the reversal of fortunes, Kat said, "I should warn you - it delivers an electric shock if you try to disrupt the circuit. Kinda stings, huh?"

"This is ridiculous," Dragonelle snarled, rubbing at her wrist - but being careful of the cuffs.

"No. This is _insurance_." Kat shook her arm, making the dragon's arm rattle too. "This is a hundred-plus pounds of dead weight for you to drag around if something happens to me. Like, say, if I get choked unconscious?"

Dragonelle's glare deepened until her dark eyes were barely slits. "Touché."

The dragon, Kat reflected, would probably be insulted to know that this attempted coup had been anticipated all the way back in Orlando. She tried to sound cool instead of smug: "So we're still going to do this my way. Got that?"

"Why not? Time _is_ on my side. Ability, too." Dragonelle ran her free hand across the gold plate on her forehead, brushing away nonexistent dirt or cooties or something. Maybe just the shame of being repeatedly trumped by an N-Tek girl. "I have a safehouse here in the city. We'll stop there and then go hunting."

"Works for me," Kat said. She retrieved her backpack from the Hawk and tugged the canopy closed, so that it would melt away into invisibility again.

They took the elevator down in silence - Kat's silence victorious, Dragonelle's sulking - and arrived on the level of the secret motor pool seconds later. The Feebs hadn't gotten here at all, so there was quite a selection.

Kat took a set of keys from the office and felt a dark thrill at not having to sign out for the stupid thing. She and her sulking prisoner found the corresponding car with no trouble. Climbing in handcuffed was a bit of a trial, but nothing they couldn't figure out.

"A Shadow," Dragonelle observed, running a finger along the slightly dusty dashboard. "Not a convertible, but I _suppose_ it'll do. Are we jealous of Steel, hmm?"

"Nope," Kat said, starting the engine. "His always blew up."

The safehouse turned out to be located in a sketchy apartment building in an even sketchier neighborhood. Kat parked the Shadow at the curb and set the alarm, then reluctantly left it to the mercies of Berlin's criminal elements. _So much for keeping this one intact_, she thought with an mental eye roll. Shadows seemed predestined for bad ends.

Inside the apartment building didn't look any better. Dragonelle's hideout was on the top floor, facing the street. It was small - two rooms - with a single tiny, dingy window, and not only was it not furnished, it hadn't seen any housekeeping at all since the day it was built.

Dragonelle led the way, running an idle finger along the thick layer of grime and dust along what had to be the kitchen counter. The "kitchen" was maybe three feet square. "Rent's cheap and they don't ask questions. What more could a fugitive spy want?"

Kat tried the rusty - and encrusted, ew - tap at the sink and came up dry. "Running water."

"We won't be here that long." Dragonelle sauntered into the other room and Kat followed perforce; this one appeared to be a bedroom, although the only clue was an unrolled sleeping bag and some wadded-up blankets in the middle of the floor. There was also a chest-high, ancient-looking safe bolted to the floor and wall in one corner. "I need a change of clothes. Not to mention a new identity."

The dragon spun the dial of the safe too quickly for Kat to see the combination, although they both knew that Dragonelle would never come back to this safehouse after today. She swung the door open on surprisingly silent hinges and stepped back to let Kat have a peek inside.

Masks, wigs, passports piled up in drifts, makeup, clothes - even something that looked like a slimmed-down version of her distinctive (aka ridiculous) DREAD uniform. There were also stacks of euros and other coinage, paper and metal both, tucked into every free space. Kat was willing to bet that a lot of the money was not the genuine article.

Dragonelle pulled out the uniform, a passport, and some of the cash. "Take something. You need to not look like a bleeding-heart N-Tek groupie."

"Flattery," Kat said. She was going for a mocking tone and obviously succeeded, because the dragon scowled. Needling Dragonelle was big fun, if you ignored the circumstances and the handcuffs. "Okay, fine."

She selected a black leather biker jacket with metal studs everywhere and, by lucky coincidence, a snarling tiger embossed on the back. She also grabbed a passport and flipped it open to see who else Dragonelle might be. This one was issued to _DRAKE, NELL._

Wordplay. Cute. Kat suppressed a gagging noise and tossed the passport back into the safe.

Then they got to have an argument over Kat's refusal to undo the handcuffs long enough for the dragon to slip into something more comfortable. Since she had the key, she won. Dragonelle sulked but managed anyway, although Kat didn't see how since she kept her eyes averted. Some things were better left unknown.

_You are seriously not worth this_, she told Josh/Max in her head. But of course he was.

Rocks and hard places. They always sucked.

Dragonelle finished her transformation from convict to supervillain by applying a heavy coat of cosmetics, apparently to compensate for the lack of ridiculous gold armor. "Let's go," she said.

And then the dragon produced a katana from thin air, yanked the cuffs taut and sliced through them in one smooth move.

"Relax." Dragonelle slid the katana into a harness on her back. "Unfortunately for both of us, you have resources I need. I can't eliminate you until I find Mr. Dread."

Kat shook out her hand. The sword had grazed the flesh on the back of her wrist; it stung, but wasn't bleeding, just kind of oozing. Another battle scar to show off back at the office. "Yeah. Vice versa. Keep that in mind."

Dragonelle met her eyes and held them. "Oh, I will."

They had a short but intense staring contest, during which time the tiny apartment crackled with mutual animosity and grudging teamwork. The dragon looked away first.

_Eye of the tiger,_ Kat thought. _There_ was a joke.

She picked up her stuff, including the really sweet biker jacket which Dragonelle was _not_ getting back, and they exited the safehouse. The car was still parked where she'd left it, all four tires were present and whole, and the windows and gleaming blue paint job were unscratched. _Miracles happen._

"I'll tell you where to go," Dragonelle said as they climbed into the car again. The lack of cuffs made it a heck of a lot easier. Kat was secretly glad that Dragonelle had gotten rid of the things... if only she could trust the terrorist not to put that sword into her back. Cooperation from a professional chameleon was always suspect.

"Where _are_ we going? The Minion Information Clearinghouse?"

A nasty smile twitched across the dragon's face. "Not quite."

Where they were going was a large, well-maintained house in an affluent neighborhood, one entirely devoid of gang slogans and spray-painted obscenities. Kat did a drive-by sweep, checking for trouble, then made an illegal U-turn and went back. She stopped a few houses down and was pleased to notice that the Shadow looked as if it belonged on this street. That'd make things easier. Probably it wouldn't get trashed, either.

"Dr. Kaspar Wolff," Dragonelle said, gesturing at the house. A light was on in one of the windows. "A very good surgeon with a very bad cash-flow problem. DREAD supports his lifestyle."

"And blackmails him while you're at it," Kat concluded. "Nice. Two birds with one stone."

She was being sarcastic, but Dragonelle flashed another nasty smile. "Clever, yes. He's too useful to lose. Dr. Wolff was the one who stitched Mr. Dread back together after N-Tek destroyed his base here."

Another mystery solved, another name to go on N-Tek's watch list. Thanks to Dr. Wolff, Dread had come back from the too-evil-to-be-dead with revenge on his horribly scarred mind, and Max had nearly gotten killed. And of course Kat was not down with the killing Max thing. "I already hate the guy. So are we gonna knock on his door or what?"

The smile turned downright predatory. "Exactly."

They got out of the car and strolled up the sidewalk to the house, looking as inconspicous as two women wearing black leather and a katana could look. At least it was dark out.

"Follow my lead," Dragonelle murmured as the closed in on Wolff's door. "As far as he knows, you're DREAD. Be silent. Be scary."

"That from the DREAD training manual?" Kat murmured back.

Dragonelle threw a burningly unamused look and knocked. Brisk, professional, and somehow chilling. Definitely a knock you'd want to answer if you were a doctor with terrorist accountants. Unsurprisingly, someone inside hurried to the door. It opened a crack and promptly had a black-leather, gold-plated boot wedged into the gap, forcing it wider.

"_Guten Abend, Herr Doktor_," Dragonelle said smoothly, flashing a lot of sharp teeth. "_Wo_ _ist _John Dread?"

Dr. Kaspar Wolff was in his fifties and had definitely been a fan of strudel his entire life. Round body, round face - sagging into jowls - and large square glasses framing round blue eyes. The eyes widened and the jowls blanched. "D-D-Dragonelle! _Guten_ - _guten Abend_! Ah - yes, ah - John Dread - I -"

"It's a simple question," Dragonelle said. "I even asked it in your language. Should I try it in English?"

Wolff took a step back, into the imagined safety of his house. He recovered enough to notice Kat, who was trying to look like she regularly beat up old jowly doctors for no good reason - but he still was pale as a ghost and clearly rattled. "Yes, I mean, no. I'm so sorry. You've caught me by surprise. Where is Mr. Dread - yes. I - I haven't seen Mr. Dread in quite a while. I'm not certain I remember -"

Dragonelle pushed past him as if she owned the place - she sort of did - and Kat followed. "That's fine. We'll wait inside while you think about it." They stopped at the base of an elegant staircase.

Wolff hesitated, then shut the door and hurried to join them. "Please, Dragonelle, make yourself comfortable. Your friend too. Am I to be introduced?"

"No," Dragonelle said.

Kat cracked her knuckles.

The good doctor nodded his head vigorously, making his jowls bobble. Obviously he thought ignorance was an excellent idea. "Well. Yes. Mr. Dread. He came here after that unfortunate business - Well, you know this. I had thought not to see him again. To my surprise he returned - oh, a little more than six months ago."

John Dread hadn't died in Del Oro. John Dread was stopping by Berlin six months ago.

Kat wished she had Berto eavesdropping on this, just for proof. She felt a savage satisfaction. _So much for the CIA. Got your trail now, Dread. Ha!_

Dragonelle's face was blank, but her eyes glinted with much the same emotion. "How?" she demanded.

"Ah - the Frenchman. Again." Wolff took his glasses off and held them up to the light, inspecting for smudges.

Kat slouched against the stair rail, looking casual but thinking furiously. The Frenchman, "again"? Was that L'Étranger? Or worse, was it N-Tek's Benedict Arnold, her old boss Jean Mairot? Either way, it was bad news. Mairot was supposed to be dead and the stranger a solo act.

She sure was getting an education on this mission. Not to mention a headache.

"This time Mr. Dread was in very bad shape, very bad indeed. There had been other doctors, but they had done little more than stabilize him. He barely survived the journey here." Wolff slid the newly un-smudged glasses on. "I repaired what damage I could and held him until he was strong enough to travel once more."

"Where did they go?"

"I don't know. Moscow, I believe. They asked if I had connections there - they wanted not to reactivate the Russian cells."

Which would reactivate N-Tek or, at least, CIA interest in DREAD. Kat wished for Berto again. All this time Dread had been sulking around in the shadows, right under their noses, and no one had had any idea.

"Sadly, I could recommend no one." Wolff tried to look sad and failed abysmally. "They assured me that they could arrange something regardless."

The dragon pondered this, then asked, "And Mr. Dread was alive when you last saw him?"

Arrogance and anger flashed in Wolff's eyes, professional indignation, but he buried it quickly and nodded. "Of course, yes, of course. I would never disappoint such an important man by allowing him to die in my care."

Dragonelle cut her eyes to Kat and put a hand on the hilt of her katana, making an obvious nonverbal statement: Time to be scary.

Old memories bubbled up out of nowhere. Old bad memories, of what the young bad Kat used to do. _Oh yeah, that's right - this criminal stuff makes me feel like puking. No wonder I switched to heroics._

"I'll start the car," Kat said flatly.

She left the house before Dragonelle could finish pulling out the sword, or Dr. Wolff could stammer out a frightened question about what the sword was for. There was no point in keeping close tabs on the dragon now; _she_ had the jet and it was a long walk to Moscow.

Kat got into the Shadow and fired it up, checking the clock. It was well over twenty-four hours since Josh had collapsed; it was almost twenty-four hours since she'd hatched her so-called brilliant scheme, which was starting to really suck.

She was racing the clock. And the clock was starting to win.

_I'm moving as fast as I can_, she told Josh. _I'm getting closer. This is going to work. This is _going _to _work_. You're not going to die on _my _watch. _

Dragonelle slid into the car looking entirely pleased. "Back to N-Tek and then on to Moscow. If that's all right with you, _Agent._"

_Just hang on_, she thought, but whether that very desperate plea was for Josh or herself, Kat didn't know.


	8. Russian Roulette

Note: Sergei Nikolaivitch Avadeyev and his crew, like the good doctor, are my inventions. Sergei's first name is a homage to _JAG_; the patronym, to the X-Men's Colossus; and the last name comes from Alexander Avadeyev, the original commandant of the Ipatiev House. (More on that later.)

* * *

"What's up with this?" Kat asked her minion tour guide - shouted, really, over the noise coming from inside the nightclub. It was tooth-rattling techno at its loudest and went pretty well with the neon-glitter facade of the place. Moscow's hottest spot, supposedly. It looked to Kat like a gaudy ex-factory perched on the edge of a seedy, derelict, disgustingly dirty neighborhood, but hey, who was she to judge?

Dragonelle shouted back, "This place is owned by someone who makes _arrangements_."

The party people waiting in line gave them vaguely curious glances, but not for their fashion choices: The dragon's DREAD uniform was hardly the most exciting outfit being paraded tonight, and Kat's jacket-jeans combo was downright boring. No, it was the American English that drew attention.

That and Dragonelle's rough shoving as she pushed to the front of the line. Kat elbowed along right behind her.

They jostled annoyed clubgoers and got - along with some really nasty comments in Russian - within spitting distance of the front doors. There they ran into the omnipresent bouncer.

He was standard-issue enforcer: Tall, bald, and surly. His black t-shirt was in desperate danger of being shredded across his muscles, and most of the top of his head hosted a swirly, spiky tribal tattoo. Metal spikes and studs decorated the rest. Not a guy to mess with.

He rumbled something at them in Russian.

"We're here to see Sergei," Dragonelle said. It was in a cloyingly sugar-rich tone that went perfectly with the blatantly suggestive smile and body posture she offered up.

Kat felt slightly nauseous. The bouncer was likewise not impressed. He rumbled, in badly accented English, "Name."

"We're _here_ to see _Sergei,_" Dragonelle said again, this time with less honey and more fire. Her eyes were narrowing and the smile taking on a razor edge.

"Not without name," the bouncer growled back. He folded his arms over his chest and squarely blocked the entrance. "Leave."

The dragon drew herself up into full hissy-fit mode. "_Fine_. It's _Dragonelle_."

The bouncer snapped his fingers and a normal-sized employee appeared with a paper-bearing clipboard that all but vanished in big boy's hands. The bouncer consulted the list, then tossed the clipboard back at the other employee, who made a hasty retreat. "Not on list. You leave."

Kat leaned over and asked Dragonelle, "How important is it that we get into this club?"

"Extremely," Dragonelle said, giving the bouncer an industrial-strength Death Glare.

The bouncer cracked his knuckles.

Kat felt a flash of sympathy for the guy. Here he was, just doing his job, not asking to be part of their international terrorist scavenger hunt or an obstacle in their path. It was going to be really embarrassing for him in a few seconds, when he was flat on the ground, totally KO'd.

Kat asked, "On three -?"

Dragonelle cocked an eyebrow. "Why wait?"

They didn't.

The bouncer hit the ground and before his big bald skull had finished bouncing itself, Kat and Dragonelle were through the door and into the club. The interior lived up to the promise of the exterior: dark, lots of crazy-colored lights flashing, really loud music, and a wild party crowd living it up in all sort of ways, most of which were probably illegal. Good times in the _Rossiyskaya Federatsiya_.

They also quickly discovered they'd run straight into more trouble.

This trouble was seven other guys stamped from the same mold as the thug outside. The main differences were the amount of hair, piercings, and the weapons in their hands.

Two of the new thugs had good old-fashioned nightsticks. The other five had shock-sticks that looked suspiciously like DREAD issue.

_I guess Sergei buys from the same catalogue._ Kat wanted to yell that at Dragonelle, but this close to the speakers, she had a better chance of being heard telepathically.

She and her _de facto_ ally instinctively took their stances back-to-back as the Russian enforcers closed in. Any fatigue Kat might have felt was washed away by a welcome rush of adrenaline, and she consoled herself with the fact that Dragonelle, whatever her personal failings, was actually a pretty fair fighter.

The shock-sticks lit up and the enforcers came in swinging.

Kat ducked the first one and knocked the guy back a few steps, right into the thug behind him. They toppled; the glorified electric cattle prod bounced across the dance floor and tagged a civilian man, who immediately crumpled, unconscious. Dragonelle, meanwhile, had done something that sent her first opponent flying into a wall headfirst, smashing a bank of lights.

The less adled party people finally realized something was amiss and scrambled for the exits. Within a few moments, mass panic had arrived and the combatants had to fight with civvies tripping over them on their ways out.

"This isn't helping!" Kat yelled. She took a blow to the side and gave one back with interest. The thug grunted and staggered out of range. _Four down._

"Deal with it!" Dragonelle yelled back. Her next victim suddenly bent double and collapsed; she plucked the nightstick from his slack hands and swung it at victim number three with skull-cracking success. _Six._

Kat had her fist pulled back and ready to smash into lucky number seven's face when the music cut off. That was a relief, but since it was replaced by a single gunshot - not much of one.

Everyone still on the floor froze.

"This is no way to get what you want," a man's voice said. He sounded calm, cool, and surprisingly amused. "But then, you've never been one for manners, have you, Dragonelle?" the man concluded as he came into view on the far side of the floor.

He was everything Dr. Wolff wasn't: young, tall, dark, handsome, and slickly dressed in a sharp business suit. His English was nearly flawless, with the barest hint of an accent. Not exactly the first image that sprang to mind when someone said "Russian mobster" - but the Red Mafiya was full of PhDs and professors.

"Seryozha, _tovarisch_," Dragonelle said, all smiles. She gestured at the man for Kat's benefit. "Sergei Nikolaivitch Avadeyev. Charming and dangerous."

Sergei grinned as he crossed the floor, displaying excellent, very white teeth. "Precisely how I introduce you, Dragonelle."

The dragon sketched a mocking curtsey.

Some of the thugs were climbing to their feet; some were getting assistance. None of them looked eager for Round 2 now that their boss was on the scene.

"And who are you?" Sergei asked Kat with point-blank precision.

The technically correct answer had been, for years, _Senior Field Agent Kat Ryan, N-Tek_. Nowadays _Kat Ryan, professional extreme athlete, N-Tek_ was also okay.

"Kat," she said shortly. She met his scrutiny with a half-smile of her own - a look that said, _Hey buddy, I'm not impressed._

Sergei's amused expression deepened. "Katya. Wonderful to meet you." He swung his attention back to Dragonelle. "You're here for your boss."

"Always so clever," Dragonelle said. "Where is he?"

Sergei paused, letting the moment draw out. "No. No, I don't think I'll share that information with you."

One black-gloved hand wrapped around the hilt of a katana. "I don't think that's an option."

"You've ruined a night's business," Sergei noted, losing his amusement to a cold practicality. "This incident will cost a small fortune in bribes. I haven't worked for your organization in over a year. What's more, I -"

Kat slugged him.

It was a good shot, a gut shot, a punch to the stomach that dropped Sergei Nikolaivitch Avadeyev to his handsome knees and made him retch. The thugs made omnious rumblings but didn't approach.

Kat grabbed him by the lapel of his expensive suit and dragged him up. "Get this: I am sick and tired of chasing down uncooperative leads. So tell _me_, or your boys are going to be out of work. Clear?"

This whole threatening shtick was uncomfortably like her old life, and for a second she hated herself. Then she remembered that Josh was who-knew-how close to dying, and she was running around playing underworld tag with the dragon, and it didn't matter.

Sergei coughed, still wheezing a little from the punch. No - laughing, she realized. The Russian was actually _laughing_. "No manners," he said. "None at all. We'll talk in my office."

The thugs finally approached. And, oh joy - now they _all_ had guns.

Which was why Kat shortly found herself standing in Sergei's very tasteful, un-nightclub office, being frisked for a wire. The secretary - make that "administrative assistant" - doing the frisking finished and turned over the half-dozen items he'd discovered to Sergei. Then he glanced at Dragonelle, snorted, and said something in Russian that probably meant, _No room for a wire under _that.

Sergei grinned and dismissed the assistant, but kept four bodyguard thugs. "Sit," he said, taking his own advice. Kat and Dragonelle sat. "You have wonderful timing. We just got rid of all the pests this morning."

Dragonelle rolled her eyes.

"Bugs and moles," Sergei confided to Kat with a roguish wink. She rolled her eyes and added a derisive snort for good measure.

"Do you know where Mr. Dread is or not?" the dragon demanded.

Sergei leaned back in his chair, toying with a fountain pen - and with the two of them, Kat suspected. "I know. I made the arrangements myself."

Dragonelle hissed impatiently. "So _where is he_?"

But Sergei wasn't paying attention to her anymore. He was frowning at Kat. "Kat... Oh, of course. Kat Ryan, correct? The athlete. In Del Oro Bay, California."

Dying or not, mission or not, Kat felt like throttling Josh. Public, televised competitions - what a great idea for a guy with a secret identity! Not so great for his one-identity bodyguard.

Instead, she gave Sergei a smile that looked more like a grimace. "Yeah."

"You're very consistent in your performances. You're good for business," he said, making the international finger-rubbing symbol for "lots of money".

"I do my best." Kat crossed her arms over her chest, making the black leather creak. "Hey, about Dread -? Kinda like to get back to that. _Seryozha_."

Sergei took the use of his diminutive name in stride. In fact, he seemed to like it. _Uh-oh. Slight miscalculation_, Kat thought, getting an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. Judging from the slow, devilish smile spreading across his face, he was in favor of her using any kind of intimate nickname she wanted.

"I'll tell you," he said to her.

Dragonelle made a nasty growling noise deep in her throat.

"I'll tell _you_," Sergei repeated, now openly amused with life in general, "because dear Dragonelle has not made me nearly so much money in the last six months."

Kat smirked. "She's been in jail."

"You should remember that I'm currently _un_incarcerated," Dragonelle said sharply. There was enough fire and acid in her voice to melt titanium; Sergei just chuckled and scribbled something on a piece of paper, then handed it to a bodyguard along with instructions in Russian.

The thug handed the paper to Kat. She glanced down and read it.

EKATERINBURG, it said in bold letters. Ekaterinburg was 800 miles away - the twinkling of an eye in a Hawk.

Below that was an address, and below that was the notation, NO MORE THAN THREE MEN WITH HIM.

_YES! Josh, your annoying Boy Scout self is as good as saved._

_If_ he was still alive.

Even that cheery thought couldn't kill the buzz of adrenaline she had now: Her final goal was in sight.

Kat folded the paper and stuck it in her back jeans pocket. She looked up at their host, suddenly grateful and also curious. "What's your PhD in?" she asked.

"Medieval French literature. Now. I have police to pay off, so - _Dos vidanya_," Sergei said, leaning back in his chair, looking tall, dark, handsome and very much the ruthless crime lord. With a doctorate in medieval French literature.

Say one thing for the dragon: She knew some interesting folks.

Dragonelle, thoroughly ticked off, rose and headed for the door without a parting shot. Kat, thoroughly psyched, followed.

Sergei Nikolaivitch Avadeyev ruined her mood by calling out, "I'll see you around, Katya," as the door swung shut.


	9. The Quick and the Dread

Note: Ekaterinburg/Yekaterinburg was named after Empress Catherine (Ekaterina), wife of Tsar Peter the Great. It was also the site of the Ipatiev House and thus the execution of Tsar Nicholas II, his family, and servants. His wife, Empress Alexandra (aka Body No. 7) was a descendant of Mary Stuart (Queen of Scots), to whom the quote is attributed, and who herself was executed. It's a great big circle of death!

Cathedral-On-The-Blood is built on the site of the Ipatiev House and commemorates the death of the imperial family.

* * *

Kat banked the Hawk over Cathedral-On-The-Blood - its gold domes and bronze statue all lit up for nighttime viewing - and did her best not to think about why it was called that.

Ekaterinburg had some dark secrets in its past; dark and deadly. It also had a long-gone heyday as a booming Soviet industrial center. Now it was one of many Siberian cities struggling to survive in a brave new capitalist democracy.

Ivan Vostok had once controlled it and everything else from Novgorod to Vladivostok, but since a Muscovite gangster was casually using it as a storage room, it looked like ol' Ivan had finally hit retirement age.

"Funny, isn't it," Dragonelle said from the backseat as Kat found the address. Her tone implied humor, but of a razored, nasty kind. "How we ended up in E_kat_erinburg."

"Oh yeah, it's hilarious." She set the Hawk down and studied the terrain for a minute.

A row of warehouses, with their target the second one in line. Leftovers from the big communist dream: Huge, abandoned, mostly rust. The pavement she'd landed on was deeply cracked and grass was starting to take over. The _Rossiyskaya Federatsiya_ dream.

Kat slid back the canopy - but manually locked the rear harness at the same time. This meant she was able to climb out, pull her backpack on, and stand on the wing while Dragonelle, pinned in place, simply glared.

"Nice," Dragonelle spat. She was plainly furious, but there was an undercurrent of satisfaction that Kat really didn't like.

"Once bitten," Kat said. She winked, then reached in and cuffed the dragon's hands to the center of the harness. "_Stay_," she ordered, grabbed the katana, closed the canopy, and hopped down.

There was no way she was reconoitering with Dragonelle at her side. That was a total death wish, and the point of this mission was to _avoid_ the death thing.

She ran across the open pavement and hugged the side of the warehouse, waiting to see if she'd tripped security. Nothing happened, so she cautiously made her way around the corner to the nearest door. A window would've been better, but there didn't seem to be any.

The door was unlocked and she eased it open. N-Tek agents went unarmed for the bulk of their assignments, which made the katana in her hand a nice bonus. Not that she was as good with swords as she was with other weapons.

Inside, the warehouse was a study in pitch black ink. She caught a strong smell of old industry. Burnt metal and oil, among other things. _Great. How many toxic chemicals am I sucking into my lungs?_

She shut the door silently and was contemplating turning on her penlight when there was a loud, echoing clank and the whole warehouse lit up like noon.

It was blinding after the darkness outside and Kat shut her eyes despite herself. She opened them almost instantly and squinted into the bright light - which was good, because there was someone standing in front of her now.

Someone she recognized. "_You_," she said, furious.

"Agent Ryan," Jean Mairot said in his soft French accent. "How very... unexpected."

Mairot and the two DREAD soldiers with him marched Kat out to the stealth-moded Hawk. The gun pressed into her spine convinced her to open the canopy and unlock Dragonelle's handcuffs, but it _didn't_ convince her that she was glad to see her old spymaster.

Mairot looked pretty good for someone who was allegedly deceased. The fire that had melted Dread's face had only singed him - a few scars on his neck, a slight stiffness to his walk. Other than that, he was the picture of health.

"Traitor," she shot in his direction as they all marched back inside.

He shrugged, unfazed. "These things happen."

Kat snorted. She was still angry enough to kill, but they'd taken the katana away from her, along with all the goodies in her pockets, so that wasn't really an option. Maybe later.

With all the lights on, it was easy to see that the warehouse was holding more than John Dread's Last Stand. Metal drums were stacked up halfway to the hundred-foot ceiling, all labeled in Cyrillic letters, which Kat couldn't read - but those international BIOHAZARD and FLAMMABLE pictures helped her figure out the contents pretty fast. Smaller canisters with pressure valves (and more red FLAMMABLE campfires) were clustered around the floor.

"Gonna go out in a blaze of glory? Again?" she asked the villains at large. They ignored her.

"He'd better be alive," Dragonelle said to Mairot, hard-edged.

Mairot stopped at the base of a rickety metal staircase. Being blown up must increase one's Zen factor, because Jean was definitely not feeling pressure from any quarter these days. "He is," he said calmly. "I can't assure you, however, that that will remain the case."

He climbed up the stairs with Dragonelle hot on his heels and Kat right behind her. The gun-toting soldiers brought up the rear. They clomped up to an office space that overhung the main warehouse floor. It was pretty big, stretching most of the way across the end wall. The windows had been covered over and the door was suspiciously reinforced.

Mairot waved his hand over a scanner set into the door and it opened with a pneumatic hiss. He cordially stepped aside to let Dragonelle go in first.

There wasn't much inside. A few partitions, some security equipment - banks of monitors showing different views of the warehouse, DREAD energy rifles, shock-sticks. Three battered army cots and a rudimentary kitchen were visible beyond one partition..

The center of the space had been walled off and reinforced again. There was one door and no windows, and this door's lock required a retina scan and voiceprint. Mairot did the honors once again and the door clicked open.

As spartan as the rest of the living quarters were, this room was even worse. A hospital bed filled most of it, but that was all. No chairs, no lights, no nothing. Just a boxy square room with a bed - and in the bed, a man whose primary indicator of life was an extremely unhealthy rattle when he breathed. The door spilled in some light, but not enough to reach his face.

"John Dread, I presume," Kat said. She was still in cyncism overdrive: She wanted hard proof before she would admit, even to herself, that this was Dread.

Dragonelle whirled on her with a sharp and vicious, "_Shut up_. Or _bleed._ Your choice." The business end of the katana was suddenly at her throat, and the gold plate on the dragon's forehead looked abruptly menacing instead of stupid.

Kat took the hint and said nothing further.

"Where's the doctor?" Dragonelle demanded of Mairot. Now the sword was in his face, and the deadliness of her tone went up a few notches. "The medical equipment? Do you want him to die?"

"No," Mairot said, full of Zen. "But I believe that _he_ does. These arrangements were his idea."

That took the wind out of the dragon's sails. She visibly shrank and turned, sword lowering itself uncertainly, to the man on the bed. "Mr. Dread?" she asked. Softly. Like a child waking her father.

"Dragonelle. I wondered... when you would arrive," came the faint response. Weak but lucid. And definitely, without a doubt, the man himself.

John Dread.

Kat didn't have time to bask in her victory. She didn't even have time to go up and gloat to the man in person. Mairot immediately and forcibly pulled her out of the room without so much as a "beg your pardon".

He said something in Russian to the two soldiers and they nodded crisply before leaving the office altogether. Mairot waited in silence until the clattering footsteps had vanished down the stairs. Then he drew a silver CD out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her.

"Since we went underground I've been unable to contact Jefferson by the usual means," he said in a low, unruffled voice. "This is all the data I've gathered on DREAD's current international operations. You must give it to him, and no one else, as soon as you return to Del Oro Bay."

Kat stared. One eyebrow hiked up against her will. "_Excuse_ me? I'm supposed to give the boss your double-agent mystery disc ASAP, no questions?"

A thin smile flickered across his face. "I _am_ a double agent," he said. "Only not in the way the world was led to believe."

It made sense; if Sergei could sweep out the moles in his organization, for sure Jeff could. Jeff was the best. And what better way to get the inside scoop on DREAD than to have a totally trusted spy as the right-hand man? Obviously Mairot had made himself indispensible.

_But_...

She held up the disc, cocked her wrist like it _might_ be a teeny silver Frisbee. "I wanna know what it says."

Mairot nodded, not really happy but not really surprised. "Fine." He took the disc, stuck it in the nearest computer, opened it, and let her skim the contents. She whistled softly. Forget John Dread's _habeas corpus_. Mairot had the real goods, open-mouthed-CIA-drooling stuff, and, quite delightedly, she realized she had a far better - not to mention more portable - bargaining chip than she'd expected.

_Unbelievable - I could get six generators for this info_, she thought. _Definitely going to re-negotiate_. She ejected the CD and carefully slipped it into an inner pocket of the leather jacket.

Her French host gestured impatiently. "Now, quickly. Things are coming to an end."

He gave her the contents of her pockets back. She fingered the headset, the third (just in case) pair of handcuffs, and the extra little gizmo Berto'd given her before she left Orlando. She found the catch, flipped it open, and depressed the button within.

_"Things are coming to an end." Yeah - you have no idea, Jean.  
_  
"Come," Mairot said, nudging her towards the deathwatch room. Kat wasn't keen on a return visit, but she went. They stood in the doorway for a minute and watched Dragonelle try to cajole her boss into living.

"John, no. What will happen?" she was saying. She sounded panicked and tearful and suddenly very young, and she was squeezing the heck out of his hand. Not exactly a diabolical villainess. "What will happen to the plan? To the better world? How can we make the future if you're not here?"

It hit Kat suddenly, like the punch in the gut she'd given Sergei: Dragonelle _believed_. It wasn't about being evil. It was about breaking eggs to make an omelet. DREAD and Dread had a plan for the future that its operatives believed in, and if that plan didn't sound sane to the rest of the world, well, it made perfect sense to them.

"Quiet, my dear," Dread said in the shadows, the words strained but still audible. Deathbed or not, he hadn't lost any of his authority. " _'In my end is my beginning.' _"

Dragonelle made a choked noise and lowered her head, a kind of subservient bow. Her eyes were closed and her back was to Kat and Mairot.

Mairot leaned over and whispered to Kat, "Go now and you will not be stopped."

She glanced at the door, back at the hospital-bed tableau, then decided that was good advice. Quietly, she edged over to the door; quietly, she opened it; quietly, she stepped out onto the staircase. And there was no quiet way to get down the stairs, so she just ran.

Downstairs, there was no sign of the soldiers, but the mountain of BIOHAZARD FLAMMABLE had some new additions: Beeping little things with red LCD lights. Kat paused in her flight just long enough to look down and read what one display was saying.

**00:59, 00:58, 00:57...**

"Oh, _per_fect," she said.

Then she _really_ ran.

There was absolutely no way she could put enough distance between herself and the explosion that was about to happen. That much fuel would leave a charred crater; that much fuel would create an inferno that firefighters couldn't even approach, much less knock down.

But she had to try - she had Mairot's disc and Josh's life in her pocket.

She cleared the warehouse door and sprinted for the far edge of the pavement, right past the Hawk - _write _that _off as a loss_ - all those vigilant hours with no sleep tugging at her, slowing her down - _that a plane taking off?_ - breath burning - _had to have been fifty seconds by now_ -

**BOOM.**

The world went white and her senses were flattened for a moment. The blast wave picked her up and tossed her several yards forward. She landed on her side, slid and skidded another yard or so, and oh yeah, she was gonna bruise tomorrow, but the leather jacket and denim blue jeans did their job and kept her skin intact.

She covered her head and stayed flat for a minute to avoid any huge fireballs or flaming debris. A smaller explosion nearby told her the Hawk was, indeed, toast. It left her without a ride, but she wasn't worried yet. The fact that her rubber-soled sneakers were starting to sizzle from the distant heat ranked a little higher.

When nothing hit her, she scrambled up and moved farther away, to a relatively safer distance. No doubt about it - the warehouse had gone up in a blaze of glory. And billowing, noxious black smoke. The real impressive thing would be if Dread and friends had gone up with it.

She squinted, but couldn't see a jet. Just a white smudge of contrail star-lit against the great black yonder.

"Only the good die young," she said, disgusted. And the same trick twice - that was just lazy.

She watched the fire rage on. Sirens began wailing in the distance right about the time a black military helicopter set down near her.

The CIA, running late. As usual.

She tsked. After the careful instructions Berto had given them when she hit Berlin, including the Hawk's specific GPS data, after the no-frills point A-point B piloting she'd done, after the confirmation signal she'd sent out over _their_ frequency - the schmucks _still_ couldn't find her before things went kablooey. No wonder the UN had created N-Tek.

A chubby middle-aged guy in a boring suit got out of the helicopter and gestured impatiently for her to join them.

Kat held up a hand to let Bob know he was gonna wait.

She dug the silver headseat out of her pocket - Mairot's disc was still in there too, intact - and slipped it on. "Berto! You there? I'm done and my ride's here."

There was a moment of static silence, and then Berto's voice said, "Good. We're in Del Oro now."

Something cold and unwelcome skittered through her heart. "Del Oro?"

"Jeff sent Behemoth for us." Berto paused again. "I told him everything. Josh too. I hope you have what they want, Kat. It's only gotten worse. If the generator isn't working in the next twelve hours, Josh isn't going to make it."


	10. Deadline

Note: The Caine virus appeared in "Sacrifices"; Klimo's backstory, in "Old Friend, New Enemy".

* * *

"You should not go in there," Dr. Yevshenko advised tiredly. "If you do, you should wear a proper suit."

Yevshenko had been dragged out of her cushy legit job as a biotech engineer to keep the nanoprobes alive while Kat's plan unfolded. Yevshenko took Max Steel personally: The original accident was _her_ fault, the energy tightrope _her_ failure, his fate the sum of _her_ career. So losing a day's salary (and probably the job) to play nursemaid to some very hungry Max probes was only fair in her mind. But she still wanted things to go according to the rules.

Kat wasn't interested in rules.

"Screw it. Jefferson has the - er, what he needs, Berto and the government geek squad are rebuilding the generator. I'm expendable now. And," Kat said, fixing the good doctor with an unyielding look, "we can't leave Josh alone in there."

_In there_ was the heart of the biohazard suite, deep in the R&D portion of black-ops N-Tek. It was for Level 4 hot agents - the Ebolas and the Caines of the world - should N-Tek ever meet any. Sealed off from the rest of the world, accessible only by one door, working on a separate air system, under negative pressure, it was a good place for viruses but a bit claustrophobic for people. Dr. Klimo had thoughtfully supervised its construction before going off to become a crazy evil snake-man.

Josh had been placed in there because nanoprobes in the last grueling stages of energy death had been known to become _unpredictable_.

She _really_ hated that word.

Yevshenko nodded and glanced at the row of empty, bulky blue Chemturion biohazard suits. They might not guard against nanoprobes, but they were the best protection Level 4 had. "It's your decision. You _are_ placing yourself at extreme risk."

"Nothing new there," Kat muttered. Yevshenko, her well-meaning doomsayer duties fulfilled, sent Kat through the airlock and decontamination chambers. She had to stop at the last door and wait for the pressure to equalize. Her breath fogged the tiny triple-thick glass porthole that served as the only window into the Level 4 room. Then the lock cycled open and she was in.

Sickbay in general was always a bummer; the hospital smells, the ruthlessly sanitary conditions, the beds with too-thin blankets. Not to mention the sick, injured, and sometimes dying patients.

The dying part sucked the most. And Josh was dying.

His bed looked like a computer convention, all wires and monitors and beeping things, and he himself, asleep, looked like a ghost waiting to happen: pale, skin tight against his bones. The portable generator was plugged firmly into the biolink, and the other end was anchored into the wall where it could run off company power. It chugged along with a noticible whining strain as the transphasic energy was sucked up faster than it could be replaced.

She thought he'd lost maybe twenty pounds in the last thirty-six hours.

There weren't any chairs, so she sat on the bed next to him. "Hey," she said conversationally.

His eyes blinked open, slowly, and more or less focused on her. "Kat?" he mumbled in such a weak and un-Josh voice that a knife twisted in her gut.

"Yup. Berto says to tell you they're fixing the generator."

Green electricity crawled across his skin - little lightning bolts of death. Nanoprobes biting the big one and sending up a hallelujah fireworks show as they went. The brown - no, blue - eyes slid shut and then struggled back open. "You shouldn't... have done it."

"I'm your friend," she said. "I _had_ to do it. So shut up."

His mouth twitched like he wanted to smile, but didn't have the energy. "Best friend."

"You got it." The knife twisted a little harder, and it seemed to have moved up into her heart. Geez, she was turning into such a sap.

Josh's eyes closed again and stayed that way for several minutes. Kat thought sleep looked pretty darn good but didn't dare. Instead she sat around and mentally kicked herself.

_Some bodyguard,_ she thought. Stubborn and prideful, she'd waited too long to take action, because she'd assumed that, being so awesome, she could pull it out at the last minute and everything would be okay. And one of her best friends was going to die because of that.

"My own worst enemy," she said softly to herself and, more loudly, "Sorry," to Josh.

He wasn't unconscious and mumbled out, " 'Sokay." His fingers flexed on the blanket, and she took them in hers, nanoprobe risks be darned. Yevshenko was probably freaking out, watching it on the monitor outside.

Kat thought she might freak out too: The last time she'd touched him, as she left for New York, he'd been chilly. Now he was ice - far too cold for any human or even a superhuman. Ice-cold hands, and blue fingernails to match.

"I found him," she said. She was angry at herself but her tone implied that it was directed at him - and it was, a little, since he'd been dying for months without a word of complaint. "Just FYI. Dread's alive and out there somewhere, planning armageddon. And Dragonelle totally managed to scam me even though I knew she was going to. How is that okay?"

"Meant well," he said. Green flickers again, stronger this time; his hair went brown-to-blond and she felt a sharp hot tingle on her skin where it touched his. "Did... a good job. A really good job. Kat."

"So did you." Meaning, he wasn't dead yet. _Why is staying alive harder than it should be?_ she thought. An unwelcome memory popped up, and she mentally snarled. Dread and Dragonelle were so definitely not what she wanted to think about here.

But... she knew why the dragon had said it. That weird, weightless panic. That sudden sick stab of reality. Trying to imagine the world without someone in it.

_What will happen to the plan?_

To the better world?

How can we make the future...

... if you're not here?

"I'm not going to beg," she said firmly, mostly to convince herself.

Another mouth twitch: On the verge of shutdown, he still understood what she was talking about. His voice sounded half-asleep and drifting deeper. "Don't... have... to..."

She waited for him to say something else, but that was it.

Josh slid into a coma with four hours and thirty-nine minutes left on the clock.


	11. The More Things Change

Note: Not counting her trip back to Del Oro (from Ekaterinburg), Kat travels 7,194 miles in this fic. Roam if you want to, girl!

* * *

Kat drummed her fingers on the console, watching impatiently as Yevshenko positioned Kat's comatose friend/teammate/protectee in the center of the generator. The rest of the chamber had been cleared and Yevshenko had chickened out and opted for a Chemturion suit; all this to avoid nanoprobe contamination.

The caution was taking a while and that was not cool with Kat. "Y'know, a wise man once said, 'When you're racing, it's life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting.' "

Berto was under a different section of the console, on his back and fighting with wires. "Who?" he asked, distracted by her interruption.

"Steve McQueen in _Le Mans_. How much longer?" She flexed her fingers - open, closed, open - and wondered uneasily if they should still be tingling from the nanoprobe-flicker of three hours earlier. Her scrape from Dragonelle's katana in Berlin had healed cleanly, though, and that was the same hand. "His twelve hours are pretty much over."

From beneath the console, Berto said, "Actually, we're already on borrowed time. My calculations gave him nine hours, but twelve sounded more feasible."

And he'd gone with the mostly doable twelve so the government would be inclined to chip in.

_Hardball in NerdLand._

"Don't worry - _nuestro hermano_ is tough. He'll hang on longer if he needs to. But I think we're OK now." He scooted out from under the console and asked one of the government techies something that involved a long string of jargon and acronyms. The g-man geek answered back using the same alien language, and Berto said, "Start the countdown."

Berto was looking about as tired as she felt. _Not really comforting_. Kat leaned forward and stared through the control room's thick safety glass like she could x-ray vision Josh back to normal - well, as normal as he could get. "It's gonna work, right?"

Berto blew out a heavy breath and rubbed his eyes. "Nothing in science is one hundred percent."

"Great," Kat said, underwhelmed by the reassurance.

"We only need one nanoprobe to survive undamaged," Berto said, lecturing now. "Yevshenko and I agree about that. Fully charged it can self-replicate and fix or replace the damaged probes. All we need is one out of a few trillion. The odds are good."

"But not one hundred percent." Kat sat back, worrying silently. It would've been better if she knew anything about nanoprobes. It would've been better if this had been a problem she could solve by fighting, or racing, or flying. But it wasn't and she just had to wait.

Berto issued a string of more supergeek to the goverment guys. They either scurried to do his bidding or hovered nervously in the background. One of them, twisting his tie into origami, said, "Boy, I wish we could do a test-run first."

"You haven't tested it?" Kat demanded of Berto, alarmed and incredulous.

He met her eyes with an uncharacteristically flat, hard stare, and she was reminded that there was a heck of a lot more to Dr. Roberto Martinez than nerd glasses and a taste for Hawaiian t-shirts. "There's no time," was all he said.

One by one the scurrying techs returned or called in over the com, or just yelled across the control room: "Main power clear," "Secondary systems clear," "Gyroscopes clear" - an unending checklist, regular as a clock ticking.

In Ekaterinburg the bomb clocks had been just clocks. She felt _this_ countdown like a weight on her chest. It made it surprisingly hard to breathe.

"All clear," the origami-tie tech finally reported.

Berto exhaled again and said under his breath, "_Por favor, Madre de Dios_... Don't die, _hermano_."

He pressed the button. The generator rings lurched into action, picking up speed as they rotated, and she had to fight the urge to cheer them on. Berto was white-knuckling the control console and rapidly muttering more stuff in Spanish. Kat just white-knuckled it.

Green light blossomed, the generator fired, and then -

Berto let out a whoop. "_Ciento por ciento_! One hundred percent! He's back online - all systems running normal - well, OK, not all of them yet, but -"

"He's OK?" Kat demanded, although she really wanted to ask, _Nothing in science is one hundred percent?_

Berto looked at her with an ear-to-ear grin. "Thanks to you... _hermana._"

Boy, if _that_ didn't make her pride ratchet up a notch or two. And it was really pathetic, but when Josh stood up - not really steady yet, but standing - and let out a whoop of his own and flashed a thumbs-up their way, she almost felt like crying. Almost. And just a little. Maybe one tear that she could wipe away quickly without anyone seeing.

"Good job, Ryan," she told herself. "Now go to sleep."

So she did.

Six hours in dreamland later, Kat felt slightly more human. Her fingertips were still a little tingly and, instead of fretting about it, she made a mental note to check on that with Yevshenko. But later. First things first.

She went looking for her boss.

When she'd gotten back to N-Tek, as debriefed as she was gonna get by those CIA losers, she'd handed the disc to Jefferson Smith with a muttered, "He says _bonjour_." Understanding had flickered over Jefferson's face and he'd taken the CD with nary a question.

On that long, long ride home she'd learned that more people than Dragonelle had been playing her towards their own ends. It turned out that Bob had been willing to give N-Tek a generator in exchange for Kat simply stirring things up - which she'd accomplished, no doubt; Dr. Kaspar Wolff was in custody and Sergei Nikolaivitch Avadeyev was probably moving to the top of the CIA To-Do List. Not to mention she'd flushed Dread out of hiding.

_That_ had been the CIA objective all along, but they couldn't do it since they had those pesky international politics to worry about. The pansies.

"Yo," she said when she found Jefferson. Pretty informal way to greet the big boss, but she was the golden child this week, so what did she care? "Are the men in black still here?"

"Agent Ryan." He glanced around casually. "No, they're gone. Speaking of which. It's come to my attention that you used my personal files in your very unauthorized mission."

She shrugged. "Desperate times. Got results, didn't it?"

He gave her a strange look. "It certainly did. The CIA is pushing through paperwork to reactivate N-Tek as a counterterrorist agency. We're to resume full operations ASAP. That includes..." He trailed off, focusing on a point over her shoulder, and finished with a greatly satisfied, "Team Steel."

"Talking about us behind our backs, Dad?" Josh's voice said behind her. No, Max's: it was pitched lower and was slightly cockier, although that part was always a judgement call. Kat turned to see Max - and Berto, tagging along with an overlarge PDA connected to Max by a spaghetti tangle of wires - coming to join them.

"Not if he's talking to me, Steel," she retorted. Because she was _so_ definitely on Team Steel for life now, and she had the giant IOUs to enforce it.

He winked and moved past her. Jefferson got an enthusiastic hug from his only adopted child and the world's only nano-spy. "Morning, Dad. It's a great day to be alive, huh?"

"Good morning, Max," Jefferson managed, wheezing slightly, after the embrace was over. "It seems like you're doing just fine."

"Ninety-nine percent and holding strong. He's kind of cleaned out the fridge, though," Berto added, a little embarrassed. No one had predicted that fresh-squeezed nanoprobes liked their host to eat round the clock. (Merely one more quirky nanoprobe thing, but a heck of a lot more forgivable than sucking the life out of people.)

Max slapped his father on the back, obviously pleased to simply be breathing, and returned his attention to his smirking teammate. More serious than his jovial greeting to Jefferson, he said, "Kat, thank you. You went way beyond the call of duty."

Her smirk vanished when he stepped toward her.

"Uh, yeah. Kind of already explained -" He caught her in another enthusiastic, bone-crushing hug and the rest of the sentence was cut off for lack of oxygen. But it wasn't the lack of oxygen that made her want to squirm away.

"Has he been like this all morning?" she asked over Max's shoulder, trying to extract herself without knocking him down. She was _not_ a hugging person.

Berto rocked back on his heels, grinning. "I'm afraid so."

"Thank you," Max said again, holding her at arm's length. Then he pulled her into a less painful hug and said quietly, loud enough only for her: "Like I said - you don't have to beg."

"Not going to," she said back, just as quiet but ninety-nine percent snarkier. He let go and flashed her the widest, most arrogantly self-confident smile she'd seen since she'd looked in the mirror that morning.

"We'll see," Max said to her, then turned to Berto. "OK, bro, let's hit the vending machines - I'm starving!"

_What's up with _that? she thought. Her mind flicked through the new challenges automatically, weighing the pros and cons of picking up the gauntlet. IOUs or not, it would be the kiss of death to job security, that was for sure: You didn't see Rachel Leeds chatting with the boss these days.

But then, of course, Rachel wasn't nearly as awesome as she was.

Jefferson waited until his son had left earshot (that always took a while, given the nano-enhanced hearing) before coughing discreetly. "_As_ I was saying, Agent Ryan."

She jerked her attention back to her employer. "Right."

"I'm returning Team Steel to full-time active duty, and you're back as Senior Field Agent. Officially, this is ops only. No sports, no protection work. Unofficially -" He paused and studied her for a moment, amusement dancing around the edges of his face. "_Un_officially, someone still needs to keep an eye on my son. Are we clear?"

"No problem, boss," Kat replied with full confidence. _Of course I can save your son. I can save the whole freaking world. Every day, if I have to._

"Good," Jefferson said, clapping her on the shoulder as he left. He was whistling to himself.

Kat folded her arms across her chest. She tried not to smile; she had no reason to smile. It was the most thankless job in the world, chaperoning Max Steel, and it was her own fault, really...

-END-


End file.
